NEW ZEALAND PRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 31, 5 August 1936, Page 12

NEW ZEALAND PRESS

EDITORIAL OPINIONS

THE BURDEN OF TAXATION

CAN THE COUNTRY BEAR IT ?

(By-Telegraph.)

(Special to the "Evening Post.;1)

AUCKLAND, This,- Day. In the course of a column editorial on the Budget, the "New Zealand Herald" says that financially orthodox methods have been used by Mr. Nasn in solving the problems of his first Budget. The general result is that Mr. Nash is able to present a balanced Budget, v balanced by the normal method of taxation to meet current expenditure, -with normal borrowing for capital works. Like ■ Mr. Philip Snowden's first Budget, Mr. Nash's is a triumph for orthodoxy. Its soundness cannot, however, obscure the fact that heavy burdens are laid on the people. The total, expenditure rises by £5,000,000 to the ominous total of £35,000,000, including unemployment, or about two-thirds of the receipts from the exports last season. Of the total, over £30,000,000, or about £4,700,000 more than last year, is to be taken out of the people's pockets by taxation. The question is whether the national economy can bear these burdens and whether they do not represent a crushing overload, especially as the hours devoted to productive work are being reduced. If the State takes a larger share of the smaller national output very many people, chiefly of the producing class, must go short. Lasting prosperity will not be realised in that way. While, therefore, Mr. Nash's Budget appears to be financially sound, the Government's policy appears to be economically unsound. The simplification of the income tax system is welcome, but the added weight may prove crushing to some and crippling to others, and in general that must be the big question-mark written on Mr. Nash"s Budget: whether the productive resources of the country can meet the drafts being made on them. The end of Labour's policy' is generally unexceptionable; the doubt is concerning ways and means.